By Senior Health Advisor Marcella Watkins and the pH health care professionals

Functional training seems to be an over-used term in today’s fitness and wellness industry, but what is it? It is a way to classify exercise and  refers to training the body for the activities performed in daily life.

Functional training has its origins in rehabilitation. Physical and occupational therapists would refer to it when retraining patients who had been in surgery or accidents to go back to their normal lives or jobs, that is, to function in an independent way again.

Let us give you some illustrative examples. If the patient’s job required heavy lifting, the rehabilitation would be geared towards heavy lifting. If the patient was a mom with young children, the rehabilitation would be geared towards lighter load lifting and bending. If the patient was an athlete, the rehabilitation might include resistance and strength training.

Functional exercise is the natural motion of your body in everyday activities; it’s not a New Age discipline or fad. For example, getting groceries out of your car can be mimicked and improved through exercises in a gym setting, thus improving your physical, everyday activities. When training in a functional way, you will duplicate movements from your daily activities (at home, at work, at the grocery store, with your kids, etc.) making them biomechanically efficient and safe. This is how you will benefit from training in a functional way: you will see improvement not only in your fitness level and physical abilities, but also in your life in general as your daily activities will become more efficient, you will move easier and with better form, and you will be less prone to injuries.

Unfortunately, functional training has become a buzz term used by many to promote specific machines at the gym or training programs. It really involves stability, strength, resistance and endurance training. It is, then, a very broad description that can encompass a lot, but it is founded in a very simple concept: performing movements of everyday life, with correct form (regardless of the equipment used, or for that matter, without equipment!).

At pH Total Body Fitness, we understand hectic lifestyles, lack of time and fear or bad experiences in a gym setting or with a personal trainer. That is why we have incorporated the fun in FUNctional training and have created a unique service that emphasizes the very simple and basic foundation of functional training with training techniques that are cutting edge in the industry. We want you to have fun and to look forward to being active, without the redundancies and frustrations of training in a more traditional way.

We want you to come and play but leave with a complete and comprehensive training session under your belt that just felt like FUN. Functional training does not have to be complicated, intimidating, or involve heavy machines and equipment. It can be an activity that feels playful and entertaining. Who wouldn’t want to do that and accomplish the benefits of serious exercise and training all at once?

To sign up for your free 30-min. intro session, call (818) 446-6896!

Enjoy Your Healthy Life!

The pH professional health care team includes recognized experts from a variety of health care and related disciplines, including physicians, attorneys, nutritionists, nurses and certified fitness instructors. This team also includes the members of the pH Medical Advisory Board, which constantly monitors all pH programs, products and services. To learn more about the pH Medical Advisory Board, click here.